Ok, so I did a post a few months back on biometrics.. I was just watching the UK Prime Minsters Debate and Gordon Brown was talking about how biometric passports have been integrated in an attempt to help curb illegal immigration.

Um… Ok, as Clegg brought up, you cannot control immigration from countries from within the EU. I’m not going to get into this whole immigration argument, but sadly, he’s right. Within the EU, anything goes. They can’t really track anyone. It’s a bit ridiculous. People are given free reign to come and go as they please.

Speaking of which, I flew into London Luton Airport last month. It was a Friday at around 8 am. I got off the plane and walked into the terminal – to be met by about 50,000 people. It seemed that about 20 flights had landed at the same time! “Oh god,” I thought to myself, “it’s going to take HOURS go get through customs!” But then I remembered the fancy biometric passport machines with the retina scanner (which I wrote about in my previous post). So, with a new found spring in my step, I head towards the customs desks, following the giant biometric passport symbol and the hoards and hoards of people. As I come towards the partition that leads past the zigzagging line of bodies waiting to go through passport control, and along to the biometric passport reader, I realise – with horror – that it’s closed. “Bloody machines must be broken”, I thought to myself. And I began the slow treck towards passport control.

After only about 10 minutes (surprisingly), I make it to the desk, and a nice customs officer checks my passport. “Are your machines broken”, I ask him, motioning towards the row of biometric machines behind him. “Oh, no”, he replied, “they’re only on for certain hours during the day”. He hands my passport back to me. “What, the quietest ones”, I ask him, before turning around to stare at the ever growing crowd behind me and then proceeding to walk towards the baggage carousels.

It wasn’t until after I got home that I reaslied how ridiculous it was. How much money was spent on these machines? And they only have them running a few hours each day?! Why? It can’t be because of a lack of man-power.. It just made me even more irritated. Not only are they keeping all of this data to turn the world into a Orwellian 1984 type scenario, they’re spending a HELL of a lot of money trying to do it!

On a side note, my passport has a plastic page in it which contains the chip. It’s a few mm thick and the chip and wires clearly visible through the clear plastic. My boyfriend just got a Hungarian passport, which also bears the biometric chip logo. But, I can’t tell where the hell it is! There is no plastic page, there is no thicker page, there is nothing at all to indicate where the chip on this passport is. He was fingerprinted and retina scanned when he got his passport, so obviously the information is on there somewhere.. but did they manage to make these chips paper thin?! Can anyone shed some light on this?!

Basically, the show took a bunch of “celebs” who are/were known for singing at one point or another and attempted to transform them into opera singers.

It was actually pretty good. The final saw Bernie Nolan and Darius Campbell (who appeared on another one of these “find the next famous singer” shows about 10 years ago) against each other.

Both are very talented singers, and Darius won. I’m actually glad he won. Not only is he very ridiculously good looking, he’s very talented and seems like a genuinely nice bloke.

I hope he has an album out soon!

Wasn’t a fan of Meatloaf’s judging abilities. didn’t really make much sense sticking him in the judging panel…? And Alan Titchmarsh as a host…? “Garden Digger To TV Host”? But what do I know…

And Myleene Klass… Nothing against her (half Asian girls are fabulous!)  - but she NEVER stood up straight. She was wearing all of these beautiful dresses and was schlepping across the stage and standing awkwardly with her legs looking all out of place.. very bizarre.. and her weird little pout thing that she’d do at the end of every sentence got a little irritating.. But she seems to be doing very well for herself! Just stand up straight, love!

Anyway, here’s a picture of the winner: Darius Campbell.

Darius Campbell (Image from dariusmusic.com)

Well Done Darius!!!! <3

This is going to be the BEST thing you heard all day. A job centre in England refused to display an advertisement asking for a “reliable worker” because they risk being sued by unreliable workers for being discriminatory. Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?!

The ad said the following:

Domestic cleaner required immediately for local hospital. A variety of different shifts available. Must be fluent in written and spoken English for Health & Safety reasons. Previous experience preferred. If you have a current CRB, it would be an advantage but not necessary. Training will be provided. Must be reliable and hard working

I wonder why they didn’t go after the part where they wanted fluent written and spoken English.. Isn’t that discriminating against 75% of the British population?! And I presume “Health & Safety” has now magically become a proper noun – because of the capital letters?

So the job centre refused to display the ad because they didn’t want to be discriminatory. Does this mean that soon I sue a law firm or hospital for discrimination because I don’t hold a law degree or any medical qualifications? Of course not! What a giant load of rubbish.

The person who banned this job should be in line waiting to find a new one because it seems that they are too incompetent to do their present one.

But it doesn’t really surprise me. I mean, this is coming from a country with a government that is allowing hoards of foreign people to come and be workers when a huge percentage of the population is just sitting on it’s bum, in a council house, drinking lager on a sofa watching daytime TV with a pack of cigarettes surrounded by a whole bunch of babies and collecting welfare cheques. There’s just no incentive for anyone to do anything..

But if you think about it, what percentage of the “unreliable” people would actually have the energy to go out and find a lawyer to fight a case for them because of the wording in this ad being discriminatory? Probably not very many, since they’re unreliable and lazy!

Bah.

It makes you wonder about things like this swine flu vaccine. Are they secretly injecting people with mysterious things?! Are they saving the needles for DNA?! I know I’m being crazy, but what if they were? I mean, there are people that are having these RFID microchips implated in their kids “in case they get lost”. My cat has one of those.. And if you’ve seen Zeitgeist then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Gradually, these microchips will store more and more information. And then if you piss off the men in charge, they turn off your chip and you become nobody – no ID, no history, no anything. In Hong Kong, they have the chipped cards for the underground (like the Oyster card in London and the Opus card in Montreal), and they want to integrate it with an ID card. So this one card will be your travel card, your ID card, your driver’s license. If that gets lost, stolen or even worst cloned, you’re buggered. They’ve already shown that the passport chips can be cloned – there’s a video online of a guy changing a passport to have Elvis’ information on it. And then what happens? No one ever belives you are who you say you are, so you’d be really stuck. You can’t use a credit card without a piece of ID or call your bank or even the gas board, etc without giving them 16 pieces of information.

I could keep going, but I’m sure most of you have either fallen asleep or stopped reading. For those of you who haven’t. Thank you! I’ll throw some links at the bottom if you’re interested in checking out the whole RFID/Biometric thing.

But let me know what you think. Am I being a complete crazy person or is there sense in my ranting? I’m interested to know!

Lord, where do I start?! This whole biometric thing is getting a little out of control. I’m going to recount a few of my experiences in crossing borders from the last year or so.

Those of you who have travelled to the USA who aren’t Canadian or American will know what I’m talking about. Around a year and a half ago, I crossed from Canada to the USA – I had to officially leave Canada and “re-enter” to get a work visa. I know it sounds dodgy, but don’t worry, it’s completely legal. My girlfriend kindly offered to drive me from Montreal to Plattsburg NY and back again. We got to the US border and the Border Patrol guard told her to park her car and made both of us to go to the customs office. We went into this office where a whole bunch of burly customs officials were walking around with their guns. They asked us both if we’d have been arrested. If you looked at my friend and I, you would understand the ridiculousness of this question. I had to complete a form, get an eye scan and pay them to get a stamp in my passport. My friend told me later that she was scared – “why were they retina scanning you?”, she asked. They didn’t believe that we were just going to Plattsburg for lunch. But we made it, brought some clothes – which we declared to Canadian customs; and I got my papers.

Then, about a month ago, I travelled from Spain to the UK. What amazed me was that the time it took me to lift my bum off the seat on the plane and giving my mum a hug was no more than 10-15 mins. Here’s why. So I got to passport control in Luton Airport, and they had a new system going. Instead of waiting in line for a cheerful customs agent to make sure your passport picture looks like you, they have these gates that you go through. There are two gates. At the first one, you scan the chip in your passport. The gate opens, you walk through, it closes behind you. Next, there are footprints on the floor that you stand on, and you look into this device that scans your face. Apparently this machine scans the retina, the distance between the eyes, nose, mouth etc., this biometric information will be used in future to determine that you do in fact belong to your passport. Then it opens up and you go on your merry way. And apparently it’s supposed to make passport control go a lot quicker.. In my case, it did. I guess quite a lot of people still have the old style passports that aren’t fitted with chips.

After a few hours of thinking about what had happened with this whole scanning business, I thought, ‘wait a minute, did they scan my face when I got my passport?!’ I’m pretty sure they didn’t, and my mum said that the initial scan is probably them just collecting data. Which is a bit scary really. According to Direct.gov.uk, the information that is contained is that of the passport holder’s face – according to the picture on your passport. I’m sure you can’t see the detail in my iris from a photograph… I don’t know, it’s all a bit dodgy. What if you’re wearing contact lenses?! Does that mess up the scan? Oh, and I was transferring in Amsterdam, and the man looked at my picture and told me to remove my glasses and tuck my hair behind my ears. I kindly offered him additional pieces of ID which he declined…

But then, from swiping or scanning your passport, they know all your information anyway. Whenever I arrive in Canada, the nice customs man tells me that I went to school and worked in Canada.. Yes, Sir, I know that… One year I came back and started pulling out my diploma, bank statements and various other pieces of paper and the man thought I was crazy. But sometimes you do need to show them a whole assortment of paperwork and they still look at you like you’re going to walk out of the airport and start plotting to blow up the world or something. I called Immigration Quebec once and actually got hung up on because the lady didn’t believe I was who I said I was. I was absolutely hysterical. Thankfully when I called back, the person I spoke to fortunately had more than 2 braincells to rub together, and actually was able to help me. Just thinking about that makes me REALLY angry…

And this whole thing with countries sharing information is supposed to be an attempt to stop illegal immigrants, identity fraud and criminals and such – which I can completely understand; but what does that mean for the rest of us? What’s next? Already Canada, USA, UK and Australia are pooling their biometric data. I mean, if they are JUST using it for this purpose, then I suppose it’s ok.. But then I’m sure it will get taken a step further.

It makes you wonder about things like this swine flu vaccine. Are they secretly injecting people with mysterious things?! Are they saving the needles for some kind of DNA profiling pool?! I know I’m being crazy, but what if they were? I mean, there are people that are having these RFID microchips implanted in their kids “in case they get lost” or to “stop terrorist activity”. My cat has one of those.. And if you’ve seen Zeitgeist then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Gradually, these microchips will store more and more information. And then if you piss off the men in charge, they turn off your chip and you become nobody – no ID, no history, no anything. In Hong Kong, they have the chipped cards for the underground (like the Oyster card in London and the Opus card in Montreal), and they want to integrate it with an ID card. So this one card will be your travel card, your ID card, your driver’s license. If that gets lost, stolen or even worst cloned, you’re buggered. They’ve already shown that the passport chips can be cloned – there’s a video online of a guy changing a passport to have Elvis’ information on it. And then what happens? No one ever believes you are who you say you are as it is, so you’d be really stuck. You can’t use a credit card without a piece of ID or call your bank or even the gas board, etc without giving them 16 pieces of information.

I could keep going, but I’m sure most of you have either fallen asleep or stopped reading. For those of you who haven’t. Thank you! I’ll throw some links at the bottom if you’re interested in checking out the whole RFID/Biometric thing.

But let me know what you think. Am I being a complete crazy person or is there sense in my ranting? I’m interested to know!

CBC News – Canada & US to Share Refugee Fingerprints
Canada.com – Canada & US to Share Refugee Biometric Info
Direct.gov.uk – Biometric Passports Explained
Timesonline.co.uk – Baby’s Passport Becomes Bin Ladens
Timesonline.co.uk – ‘Fakeproof’ E-Passport Cloned in Minutes
Zeitgeist – Official Website – site contains links to movie on Google
Youtube.com – Hackers Create Elvis’ Passport
Wikipedia.com – RFID Microchip

The UK government is threatening to give all new immigrants, who are applying for visas, language tests to prove their proficiency in the language. This has bad news written all over it. I’m in no way trying to slate any immigrants.. My mother is an immigrant. I’m just slating this new idea.

With that being said, the government is trying to get a handle on it’s immigration problem, which is rapidly spiralling out of control. The government ministers responsible for this claim that immigrants must have a satisfactory command of the English language in order to prove that they will be able to successfully participate in society. Ok, fair enough. If Britain’s immigrants are coming to better the economy then, yes, they will need to speak the language in order to get jobs, communicate with their new fellow countrymen. But because of the welfare policy, there are too many bogus asylum seekers that are taking the states money. The country is already broke.

Also, I’m sure there are many immigrants that come to the UK and take English classes and do indeed succeed in integrating into society. And that’s great! As a functional member of society, you’re expected to do things like pay your taxes, pay your bills etc. Not sit in your council house collecting benefit cheques.

But imagine that you’re from an extremely poor and/or war torn country. All your friends are like “I’m going to the UK.. As an asylum seeker, you get a house, they pay your taxes, you get benefits, free health care, your kid can go to school”. You can’t blame these people for wanting to go to the UK – it’s not really a tough decision. Either they risk getting killed or they get a nice house and full benefits. It’s not their fault, it’s the government’s fault for making the whole thing way too easy.

But back to these tests.. Really, it’s too little too late. If the government was serious about this plan, then for the time being they should completely stop immigration – no more new applicants or people at boarders. They  should bring the troops back from Afghanistan and post them at the boarders if it will help. Then they should perform a full census, ask people where they are from, do they speak English, maybe that will mean printing forms in different languages, if so, so be it. The government needs to know who is where and doing what. Kick out the people who are illegals or bogus asylum seekers. Then start repairing the country – the now broke, ruined dump that used to be a Great country.

Also, sub-standard command of the English language by a pretty big portion of the indigenous population needs to be addressed. The current government has decimated the education system. Children are struggling with large class sizes, inferior teaching and being brainwashed by multiculturalism and labelled racists over playground spats. University students are burdened with extraordinary amounts of debt and their chances of finding employment are constantly diminishing. All the while, hoards of foreigners are being let in and the government is forking out huge amounts of money to educate them and translate for them. I don’t even want to talk about pensioners and the pittance that they are receiving…

And then there was the story today where an unregistered childminder from Malaysia who was found guilty of manslaughter for killing the baby who was in her care. After being sentenced in May 2008, she served the minimum term of her 5 year sentence and was put on a plane back to Malaysia 2 weeks ago with a voucher worth £4,500 for her to spend on her return home. Essentially, the money is a bribe for the individual to get out of the country – or a “voluntary scheme offering illegal immigrants incentives to return”. The money is given as “financial assistance” so that they can get health care, education, start a business, etc. when they return home. For a country like Malaysia, this is a HUGE sum of money. The poor parents of this baby must be furious!

What is wrong with this government, paying people to come in, paying them to get out. It’s Madness!  It’s like the Boxing Day Sales when people are lining up at 4 am waiting for the shops to open. Imagine if a  shop were to sell everything for 1 penny, how many people will be lining up outside. There are always those sneaky people who try to push to the front of the line… Now imagine the shop workers will give people who are pushing to the front of the queues £50 to leave – more and more people come and more and more will push to the front and total chaos will ensue. Sound familiar???

In the UK alone, during the last six years, over 15,000 people have filed complaints with the Criminal Records Bureau to refute the information that is being released to potential employers. Last year the equivalent of seven people challenged the CRB – twice the figure from 2002-2003.

The reasons given for the errors range from the individuals having similar personal details to an offender, to mistakes made on court and police records. Also, the increase in identity theft has greatly elevated the problem.

In the last few weeks, it has emerged that over 11 million adults will need to be checked on a database operated by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). These background checks will be required for people who intend to work with children or vulnerable adults – this goes so far as to include parents who volunteer to take young students to school related events.

Although so far the number of disputed cases has remained quite small, the long term implications of these false records will cost people their jobs and ruin peoples lives. It is the responsibility of these record keeping organizations to ensure that the sensitive information they are keeping is 100% accurate. It is ludicrous to think that people could be branded as criminals simply because they share the same name as a criminal or that they have been the victim of identity fraud. It’s like labelling someone as a criminal and letting the real offender slip through the net. It’s just not right!

In response, a spokesperson from the CRB said that their checks have prevented nearly 100,000 unsuitable people from working with vulnerable groups, but they fail to acknowledge the implications that these mistakes have had on people: “This is not about the CRB making mistakes – information released on a CRB check can be disputed for a number of reasons”. Of course it can be disputed, but it probably takes YEARS for them to go back into their files and look for their mistakes, during which time, the poor person who’s information is wrong cannot find a job, go to the park with their child.. They would probably be better off changing their name than trying to convince these box-ticking bureaucrats of their mistakes!

On that note, I wonder how many “Gordon Brown’s” have a criminal past!! And why all the lists and checks and databases? It’s supposed to be for our benefit and to protect children, but in all honesty, the current government with their stupid legislations couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery! And they want to trace everything down to text messages and phone calls, but can’t get simple details right?! I mean, I’m all for the government ensuring the safety and security of the population, but the fact that they are keeping ALL records indefinitely is not acceptable. Records for minor infringements should be cleared – especially when they are irrelevant to the type of job that is being applied for. Otherwise, eventually no one will stand a chance of doing anything! If a person was accused of being a criminal when they weren’t, they would be fully within their rights to sue for slander and defamation of character. The fact that taking so long to correct the mistakes is going to lead to so many problems in the future.

I don’t know – it’s all just getting a bit too ridiculous!